Jihadists Sharing Maps of Strategic Facilities Worldwide

Jihadists have been sharing a series of maps showing strategic military and nuclear facilities in many countries worldwide, including in Israel.

By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

First Publish: 4/28/2009, 11:36 AM

Israel News Photo: (file)

Jihadist websites recently carried a series of maps displaying strategic, military and nuclear facilities in many countries around the world, including Israel. Other items shared by jihadists over the Internet include newspaper clippings about alleged Israeli army bases in Africa.

The detailed maps are presented by Islamic fundamentalists alongside calls to carry out strikes against the named targets, according to a report released Monday by the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR).

One recent message specifies "important nuclear facilities and military bases that we should strike." The text is accompanied by several maps identifying strategic sites in nations as diverse as Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Greece, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan and the United States.

Each of the maps of the foregoing countries includes labels purporting to identify air force, missile defense and naval bases, as well as nuclear weapons facilities and other related areas. An Arabic-language map of Japan, without specific strategic sites labeled, was also uploaded to an online jihadist forum alongside an exhortation not to "forget" the Japanese.

In a separate jihadist communication cited by ITRR, reference was made to a British newspaper report suggesting that Israel had established two military intelligence outposts in Eritrea, north of Ethiopia. The story is presented along with an "invitation to blow them up."

"The recent flurry of shared targeting intelligence among jihadists is not necessarily an indication of an imminent attack on the cited assets," the ITRR report said, "however, it most surely expands the knowledge base of those jihadists already committed to carry out attacks. At the very least, it is an indication of which assets are under discussion by the adversary for potential future targeting."